For a beginner, what are some good recommendations for safety? Should I worry about paying for a premium anti-virus account and other safety related programs ?

Anti-virus is a good start if you want to protect your computer from basic malware but it wont protect from a lot of new more sophisticated malware and it definitely wont protect from certain attacks such as social engineering and executable malicious code on sketchy websites. In my opinion, the best course of action it have a computer that is only used for anything finance related and or important emails. I would also be very careful about what websites i sign up for and what websites i visit.

For a beginner, what are some good recommendations for safety? Should I worry about paying for a premium anti-virus account and other safety related programs ?

Depending on whether you are a trader or holder. You will have different ways to secure your account:For PCs to avoid being infected virus by software like keylog or virus copy stealing passwords. You should install copyrighted antivirus software (kaspersky is pretty good software)If you are a trader, Your crypto often have to put on exchanges wallet. The best way is to install security with 2FA ( should use Authy app rather than Google Authentic)+ Your password should add special characters like "@!%$" or "space"+ When using Kaspersky will have a virtual keyboardIf you are a long-term holder, you own a lot of altcoin, You should buy a Ledger (Nano Ledger s)+If you can not buy a Ledger, you can install Metemask on Chrome+If you using Myetherwallet, you should compress your "privatekey" then install password or save them on paper.+You should restrict using "PrivateKey". If you just check the wallet and you don't need for a transaction, just use the wallet address to see the wallet.

For a beginner, what are some good recommendations for safety? Should I worry about paying for a premium anti-virus account and other safety related programs ?

If you are a trader, then here are some safety tips in trading, have a clear target and a clear stop loss, take a small percent profit for position esp. during the bear market, do not trade a money for living expenses, dont be afraid of failures this is where you can earn more, do not go for one coin but invest in multiple currencies.

For a beginner, what are some good recommendations for safety? Should I worry about paying for a premium anti-virus account and other safety related programs ?

Having a premium anti virus is very good for crypto users it can save us from phishing links but it will be better to buy a hardware wallet and all your crypto currencies will be safe forever.And if you are participating in bounties and airdrops create a separate MEW wallet for that when you received your funds then move your tokens to your primary wallet and never share private keys with anyone.

You can increase your safety if you just switch from Windows to Linux. I know it could be a huge trouble if you have never worked with it, but with today's user friendly distributions (Ubuntu) you can install it easily.

Then you can continue using the same methods of protection as before (paper wallet, hardware wallet, cold storage) just in a much safer environment.

Or if you want to take security to an even higher level, you can choose specialized Linux distributions that substantially increase the security, like tails or bitkey.

For a beginner, what are some good recommendations for safety? Should I worry about paying for a premium anti-virus account and other safety related programs ?

Anti-virus or any malicious software blocker isn't just meant to protect your crypto related concerns but it's a mandatory thing to have on our own system as one of the safety measures to ensure that we are safe browsing on the web. If you are on Windows 10, then their Windows Defender is enough if you are not that type of a user who wants to install any third party anti-virus.

For web safety, it will depend on how will you managed it. Be responsible enough to deal with any malicious attempt you will see on the web as sometimes it can lead you into a trap like phishing, keylogging etc. If you are on the internet for years now, I think you already have a knowledge how to deal with your concern.

For a beginner, what are some good recommendations for safety? Should I worry about paying for a premium anti-virus account and other safety related programs ?

Of course, having an anti virus is the very first thing you should have after buying or building a pc not only because you will use that pc for trading and installing desktop wallets but also to protect you from malwares and viruses. But sometimes even you have a good anti virus but the user is careless on sites the he/she visits and files that he/she downloads on the internet, it is still not safe. You should also consider the trading platform that you will be using, even if your pc have good security and you know how to secure it, if the platform you are using have poor system security it is also not safe, so be careful on which exchanges you will trust your money.

do you want protect your wallet?if you can use blockchain for btc and eth,it has protect 2 times with authy,i think it very safe,you can use 2 acc,1 wallet you store btc,eth for long times and 1 wallet you usally log in for trade

For a beginner, what are some good recommendations for safety? Should I worry about paying for a premium anti-virus account and other safety related programs ?

the best way to prevent your private key is by using notepad to safe it and also keep a back up on your hardrive based on that you spend less and is more controlled than any other software used to safe a private key or password as the case may be.